The miracle budget airline that is Ryanair continues to buck the trend of low cost carriers across the world by actually decreasing prices, with a promise to cut fares by five percent--and with a huge sale on now with five million seats going for €10 (including taxes and charges) for September and October travel.
Anyone would think that Ryanair had a mystery supply of cheap fuel, but no, CEO Michael O'Leary has admitted he's messed up on the oil price front already; that's why Ryanair will probably only just break even this year. Even so, he's sticking with the price decrease promise anyway.
The other big drama for Ryanair these days is the crackdown on "scraper" websites that have been selling the carrier's flights. Any customer who buys one of these fares (which, ironically, often end up more expensive anyway) will have their booking canceled, so there's definitely no benefit in going to third-party sites. We're keen on picking up a few €10 fares ourselves, but we'll book direct. Promise.
Both British Airways and Ryanair will cut capacity this winter, joining the ranks of American carriers that have already announced cutbacks because of the escalating cost of fuel. BA chairman Martin Broughton said today that his airline would be making bank if oil still cost $85 a barrel, a price last seen in February. But instead of bragging about handsome profits, he declared that he and his colleagues are in the midst of
Perhaps the biggest crisis the aviation industry has ever known.
Ireland's busiest airport is still recovering from a radar meltdown Wednesday that left hundreds of flights delayed or cancelled. Officials are still advising passengers to check with their airlines before even heading to Dublin Airport.
An Irish Aviation Authority spokeswoman says that while the radar problems that crippled the airport yesterday have been fixed, only about 70 percent of flights will be operating today:
It will be nothing like the extent of the problems that happened yesterday. But it is likely that there will be some delays, especially as the day goes on. A 20 minute delay in the morning might be a 40 minute or an hour's delay in the afternoon.
Aer Lingus is letting delayed passengers rebook without charge. For its part, Ryanair is calling for a government investigation into the radar failure and is asking its passengers to do the same. The LCC has even posted contact info for the IAA on its website. Bitchy--but we like!
With low cost carrier Ryanair forever finding more ways to separate customers from their money, we're not sure if this newest innovation is something to help passengers or yet another commercial venture.
Ryanair has just launched a Flight Tracker service, which will send text messages to registered passengers in Britain and Ireland about arrival and departure times, and notify you "on those rare occasions when a Ryanair flight is delayed". It costs £1.50 ($3) to register your phone number for a particular flight, and after that, the updates are sent to you for free.
Cynics have suggested there are plenty of web-based services who'll send you such messages for free, but Ryanair's proud that you don't need to know your flight number for its tracker--you can call up and get registered with just your departure date and route. But can't you just look up your flight number?
The good ship Ryanair has remained an oak among other sapling LCCs that have gotten ripped up in the whirlwind of rising oil prices and a near global recession. But a new foe for free flights emerged this week in the form of an EU mandate that will require airlines to pay for the harm they do to the environment. CEO Michael O'Leary said this could turn into a green surcharge for fliers.
With plans to double in size in the next four years, the new payments to Brussels could cost Ryanair upwards of €250 million, half its 2007 profits. O'Leary defended the airline saying its been a trailblazer, flying planes slower than average for the last 10 years specifically to save fuel, a practice most airlines are just now introducing.
The EU wants to put the mandate into effect by 2011, so there's still some time to get crunk in a random foreign city for little to no cost. But maybe it's time for the Europeans to start investigating some alternative fuels?
Hot on the heels of our prediction that the European budget airline industry is in trouble, we're instantly proven wrong with a bunch of new route announcements from SkyEurope and Ryanair.
In the next couple of months, SkyEurope will start new flights including Kosice (eastern Slovakia) to England, Poprad (northern Slovakia) to London and more regular flights between Slovak cities and Prague.
Ryanair meanwhile is launching 14 new routes, including service to four completely new destinations: Agadir, Nador and Tangier in Morocco and Lille in northern France.
We'll have to wait till the end of the summer to see if these new routes actually pay their way. Get in while they're still available!
Two of the European low cost carriers we like to complain about most, EasyJet and Ryanair,
have apparently been the subject of complaints from others, too. Since neither of them have allocated seating, they both have programs where passengers can pay extra to be one of the first to board. But there's trouble in boarding paradise.
Britain's Trading Standards Office has been looking into a few complaints about priority boarding, particularly that passengers who've paid extra end up on a bus out to the plane with those who haven't, and don't get any boarding advantage at all. Unless they're really good at shoving and pushing, that is.
The Trading Standards people say this is all verging on fraud, and have put the airlines on notice that they're being watched. So are we.
We naïvely thought a budget airline was supposed to help us get places cheaply. But European LCC Ryanair is doing its absolute best to take the "low cost" out of low cost carrier: Now it's scrapping the free priority boarding for those who check in online.
Last August, Ryanair started charging passengers for physically checking in at the airport rather than online, which meant passengers taking baggage had to pay both a luggage charge and a check-in charge, as you couldn't print a boarding pass at home if you had bags. In January, the airline increased those costs.
The latest additional charge is for anyone who wants priority boarding. (That is, you get to fight for a seat with the first lot of passengers, rather than straggle on when most seats are already taken.) This privilege will now cost £4 ($8), regardless of check-in style. Up to 40 percent of passengers can buy priority boarding, so it's not even guaranteeing you a fantastic seat. We'd probably just skip it.
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by amandak
